


Greater Than Your Demons (Is Your Place in This World)

by Telaryn



Category: Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Awkward Flirting, Bad Decisions, Flirting, M/M, Protective Eliot Spencer, Questionable Use of Fruit as Metaphor, Running Away, Space Husbands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-04 06:00:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13358022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: Eliot and Quinn operate on the wrong side of the legal line, in that gray area where thieves too small for the government to worry about live.Until the day Eliot decides to save a couple being pursued by the Federation.  He doesn't ask questions - he has no love for the Federation, so he really doesn't care why they're being chased.He should have asked questions.  Lots of them.





	Greater Than Your Demons (Is Your Place in This World)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seraphina_snape](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraphina_snape/gifts).



> Leverage. In space. Given that this wins the unofficial "fic most likely to take over my life" award, I'm not sure how I feel about you throwing this prompt down. *g*
> 
> Seriously though - thank you for playing with us again this year, and I hope you enjoy your mod gift1

_Quinn was going to kill him…_

But blaster-fire in the marketplace never meant anything good, not with the Federation extending its reach further and further out with each passing year. Already Eliot had seen enough gray uniforms milling about to make him want to swear off coming back to Oasis for a good long while. And while he had no proof, he was reasonably sure he’d heard a few of Sterling’s goons talking in hushed tones about the old man closing up shop and heading off-world.

Things were going to change and no mistake if that happened. Most of the underworld activity in this quadrant ran through Jim Sterling’s shop, and most of the jobs too. _Least I caught him in a generous mood,_ Eliot thought, shifting around a clutch of people and quickening his pace towards where more shots could be heard. Fifty percent of the cash for their next job was already counted out and secured in a bag over his shoulder, so if they finished the job and came back to an empty storefront, at least they wouldn’t be completely humped.

No more than half a block from the main shipyard, he spotted the likely cause of the commotion barreling towards him; a young man in beggar’s rags, running for all he was worth – periodically being shoved forward by a woman, similarly dressed, who was occasionally firing shots back at their pursuers with a blaster that was far too expensive for the likes of who these two were trying to be.

 _Thieves?_ Eliot wondered, but then the gray uniforms came into view and his course was decided. Whatever these two were, they had royally pissed off the Federation and that was enough for him. Drawing his own weapon, he moved into position just in time to deflect the young man down a side street. “Keep running!”

Only the fact that he immediately began laying down cover fire – sending formerly half-interested civilians screaming and suddenly running for cover – kept him from being shot or otherwise damaged by the young man’s bodyguard. “Who are you?” she yelled as he fell into step beside her.

“Good Samaritan?” he offered, shooting through the supports on Dressler’s shop awning and sending the fabric flying back into the faces of their pursuers. “Someone with a way out if you need it?”

The young man they were following had twigged to the fact that circumstances had changed, and had stopped to wait for them. “What do you mean a way out?” the woman asked, her breath coming in sharp, desperate gasps.

“A ship,” Eliot told them. “In the yard, three blocks over. We take passengers occasionally – if you’ve got the coin we could get you out of this jam.”

The two exchanged looks that Eliot couldn’t quite read, but then the young man said, “We accept your kind offer.”

A blaster bolt slammed into the wall just to the left of Eliot’s head, startling the three of them into running again.  
**********************************************  
“You do this on purpose.” Quinn knew he was almost pouting, but Sophie had been known to occasionally respond to his charms. And for the wares she was offering today, Quinn suspected he might be able to be talked into giving her the one thing she’d always wanted from him.

Eliot would forgive him for it too – that he was sure of. For a chance at fresh cherries, Eliot would forgive him damn near anything.

“If you boys weren’t so reckless with your money,” Sophie grinned at him – openly flirting now, “you might be able to afford my meager offerings more often.” Holding up a particularly enticing cherry, she displayed it for him against the pale, smooth skin of her chest.

Saints help him, he was going to do this. “I am _not_ reckless with my money,” he said, stepping deliberately into Sophie’s personal space and crowding her up against one of the ramp supports. “You have me mistaken for my other half.”

“At least you didn’t say better half this time,” Sophie countered as he leaned down to capture the cherry in his teeth.

Quinn closed his eyes, momentarily overwhelmed as the taste of the fruit exploded in his mouth. They’d been living on protein packs and supplements for nearly a month – every last bit of cash they had going into getting Persephone to Oasis and hopefully enough work to keep them going a little while longer. _Long enough for Eliot to maybe outrun his demons this time?_

“Quinn!”

Startled, Quinn stepped back and automatically scanned the crowd for his partner. The call had been panicked, not the casual annoyance…or outright anger…he might have expected if Eliot had seen him with his face nearly buried in Sophie Devereaux’s cleavage. _Something’s happened._

“Fire it up!” Eliot yelled across the intervening crowd as their eyes met. It only took Quinn a half second to shift his focus and see the cause of whatever had gone wrong.

“Son of a…” he began. “Sophie love – I’m sorry,” he managed, getting her and her cart off the ramp in record time. “We’ll finish this next time. I promise.”

Whatever she said in reply was lost in the pounding of his feet against the metal floor of the ship as he ran for the cockpit. _Please let him have met with Sterling,_ Quinn prayed, throwing switches as he fell into his set. All around him lights and motors came to life, but if Eliot hadn’t acquired the cash they needed, it was a situation that wouldn’t last very long.  
*********************************  
Eliot caught sight of an assortment of fruit in Sophie’s cart as he ran by – pushing his two new ‘friends’ up the ramp ahead of him. _Explains Quinn’s interest,_ he thought, realizing a passing moment of regret at the knowledge that they could have paid the woman cash money this time.

“It is what it is,” he muttered, reaching the safety of the ship’s interior and hitting the ramp button and the intercom in quick sequence. “Quinn, go!” he yelled.

The ship was already rumbling to life. Trusting Quinn and Persephone to see them safe, Eliot turned his attention back to the newcomers. “Let’s get you belted up,” he said, gesturing them towards the jump seats. “This first part is going to be rough.”

The woman hadn’t holstered her blaster, although she had lowered it finally. “And then what?”

His patience almost worn through, Eliot stepped in, disarmed the woman, and stepped out of reach before she could react to him moving in the first place. “Then we figure out what comes next – whether my partner and I get you two all the way to your preferred destination, or I dump you out the airlock for annoying me.”

He stuck the blaster in his belt at the small of his back. “By the way – name’s Eliot.”  
***********************************  
Her name was Parker, and she still wasn’t sure they’d made the right move by following a total stranger right onto his ship. Alec was wrecked though, barely able to keep his feet, and whatever ‘Eliot’ was, she was reasonably certain he wasn’t from the Federation.

Not to mention, the ship had already left the ground, and was shuddering towards the outer edge of the atmosphere. Instead of fighting the confiscation of her weapon, Parker let Eliot help her and Alec into the ship’s jump seats.

“I’m going to the cockpit,” he said, once the two of them were belted in. “Stay put until you hear from me that it’s safe to get up and move around.”

Parker watched him go, trying to map in her head where the cockpit likely was, based on the minimal scan she’d gotten of the outside of the ship. Once Eliot was out of sight, she reached across and touched Alec’s leg. He had leaned his head back against the seat rest and closed his eyes, but at her touch he managed to rally. “How much are we telling them?”

It was a simple enough question with no easy answer. “You know we don’t have the kind of cash he’s going to be looking for,” Parker admitted. “I took this job on contingency. Cash on the back end.”

It was starting to disturb her how sanguine Alec was about their situation. “I hear dying in space is quick,” he offered, smiling weakly at her. “Less than a minute in most circumstances.”

“They wouldn’t…” Parker began, but stopped herself – angry at the momentary weakness. She had no reason to trust ‘Eliot’, no reason to believe that he wouldn’t do exactly what he said he would. People were like that.

To distract herself she asked, “Are you feeling any better?”

Alec had dozed slightly – at her question he seemed to come back to himself. “It’s not bad. I’ve had a couple of assignments go long on me in the past – we’ve got some time before I start showing symptoms.” He paused, and for the first time since she’d stolen him, Parker saw hints of fear in his eyes. “Your people can handle the download, right?”

She was a thief. She understood little more about what made people like Alec able to carry sensitive data in their brains and only be marginally aware of it than the average person, but the people who had hired her had been very clear that the job had time constraints. If the information Alec was carrying wasn’t downloaded in the planned for period of time, it would begin to degrade – not only gradually becoming more and more corrupt, but taking the parts of the brain that still belonged to Alec down with it.

“That’s what they said,” she offered. “I’ve got no reason to think they would play you false.” _Not with the money they’re paying to get their hands on you._

Dammit – she wasn’t supposed to care about what she stole. This was why she stole things – not people.

 _Never people._  
************************************  
“Eliot, my guiding star? Why is there a Federation gunship training its weapons on us?” Belying his calm tone of voice, Quinn’s hands were moving so quickly across Persephone’s controls that he was flying on little more than raw instinct.

For his part, Eliot was holding onto something Quinn couldn’t identify at the edge of his vision, but hoped wasn’t crucial to them staying aloft, based on the way his partner was swaying back and forth. He exhaled sharply, attention also focused on the gunship. “Those two kids I loaded on board might have been running from the local grays.”

Quinn groaned. “I don’t even know why I’m surprised. You and your goddamn hard luck cases…hold on!” He hauled back on the throttle, kicked most of the power to the starboard engines, and nearly dropped Eliot on his ass in the process. “The way our luck’s been running, you probably missed meeting with Sterling too, didn’t you?”

“Shows what you know,” Eliot countered, reaching across to biff Quinn in the back of the head. “I not only met with Sterling, I got the deposit money we were looking for. Enough to have bought out Sophie’s entire cart, thank you very much.”

 _Oh boy._ There was no way for Quinn to tell if the sudden heat in his face was from the knowing tone in his partner’s voice, or the imminent threat of being blown out of the sky. “Eliot, I…”

Another biff. “Make it up to me later. Can we outrun this guy, or do we need to Plan B it?”

 _Plan B. Plan B. Plan B._ Out loud though, Quinn said, “There’s a jump gate about fifty quads over. If I dump everything into the aft shields, they might hold long enough to keep us from catching a stray round until we can get there.”

Eliot swore softly. “Do it.”

A knob twisted all the way to the left, six buttons pressed in sequence, throttle opened all the way, and all the speed he could wring out of the engine and then some. Canon fire lanced past the view screen; Quinn exhaled sharply, trying to let his instincts continue to guide him. _Dodge left…forty-five degrees up…sharp dive…_ A few shots splashed harmlessly off Persephone’s shields, but for the most part Quinn seemed to have caught the sense of whoever was operating the Federation’s guns.

Fifty quads wasn’t an especially long stretch, but by the time the proximity sensors were warning him about the gate Quinn was beginning to wonder if their luck hadn’t finally run out.  
****************************  
Eliot had always hated travel through jump gates. _Not to mention there’s no telling how far off course we’re going to end up._ Quinn had no time to offer up any sort of destination, which meant that the transport mechanism was going to bounce them to an entirely random corner of the galaxy. _Good for escaping grays, otherwise not so much._

He closed his eyes as the lights of the gate began flashing in a rapid sequence that threatened to turn his stomach inside out. Quinn had an easier time of these trips – there was always plenty for a pilot to do, navigating a ship through the reality-warping devices. All Eliot could do was squeeze down on the strut he was holding onto, using the sense of the metal pressing into his flesh to anchor himself, and resist the urge to look at what was happening outside.

Once they were through, they were going to have to figure out where they were and how best to get back, otherwise he was going to screw the job for Sterling before they even had a chance to put their hands to it.

“Coming through!” Quinn called, over the noise of Persephone trying to shudder apart around them. “Normal space in 5…4…3…”

Eliot blew out a steadying breath as the world finally calmed. “We’re not doing that again anytime soon,” Quinn said, as he opened his eyes.

“Sterling,” Eliot countered automatically. “We’ve still got a job to do.”

His partner’s expression was as sober as he’d ever seen it. “You’re not hearing me, Eliot. You’d better hope that money you got is enough to cover what I’m going to have to do in order to…”

He broke off as an alarm klaxon began blaring through the ship. _Weapon’s cabinet. Son of a…_ With one last apologetic look at Quinn, Eliot ran for the door of the cockpit.

Five steps out, he skidded to a stop as a bullet buried itself in the bulkhead inches from his head. “That’s far enough!” Parker called out. Hands already coming up, Eliot tracked her location to the catwalk that ran overhead. “Take my gun and toss it to Alec! No tricks – that shot was a warning. I can and will take you out!”

Eliot’s only comforting thought as he did what she asked was that if she did kill him, she and Alec would find out in very short order just how much of a bad-ass Quinn could be when provoked.

The alarm cut out as he was tossing the confiscated blaster to the young man Alec – who had appeared a few feet away. “You’ve probably already figured out that we can’t pay you,” he said, catching the blaster and tucking it into his own belt. “I’m a Federation courier. Parker was hired by New Dawn to steal me.”

New Dawn was the largest, most organized resistance movement in Federation controlled space. _Growing every year._ Eliot and Quinn had run across them more than once in their travels – even going so far as to work for them once or twice. And a Federation courier; suddenly the off-quality Eliot had sensed in Alec made sense. “How overdue are you?” he asked, making sure to keep his hands in clear view.

Alec smile was rueful. “Enough. We need your help, Eliot. And I wish I could promise to pay you for it, but all I can do is appeal to whatever sense of decency you might possess.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Eliot retorted, glancing pointedly upward. “Seems to me you have something of an advantage on me right now.”

“Are you trying to convince me that your partner doesn’t have access to enough tricks to send us both out that airlock you mentioned earlier?”

 _Point,_ Eliot was forced to acknowledge. “Come on down, little thief,” he called up to Parker, lowering his hands at last. “Let’s talk.”

Quinn was _definitely_ going to kill him.


End file.
